The Quiet Picture

I’ve never been to the mountains at this time of the year, so it was quite exciting to see what they look like. But then I heard that this is a rather unusual spring, the snow has melted very early (it has been warm over there as well) so I guess I can’t draw any conclusions as yet.

The day was glorious, blue skies and sunshine. [rant] Which was just well, because my cabin is a big dark thundercloud weighing on my head (and heart). It hurts, it really hurts. If anyone knows a reliable carpenter, I’ll be all ears – that darn thing has to get finished asap, if my contractor can’t do it then I bloody well take care of it myself! [/rant]

We took the scenic road back home and the same place which gave us those nice “in the cloud” pictures three weeks ago provided a great opportunity once again. This time with sunrays filtering through clouds, I had to use HDR to make any sense of it and the pictures need some more processing, I just quickly put them through LR/Enfuse to get a preview. I’m just not inspired to work on them at the moment, the cabin is killing both my creativity and my will to live. Ok, creativity anyway. But if you’re a carpenter or know one and can finish my cabin (it’s probably just a day’s job anyway), I’ll be much happier!

I’m trying to fight off a cold and it seems like I’m doing a good job at it, because I’m not getting very sick… but I’m not fully fit either so something is going on. Normally I stay indoors when I have a least suspicion of having a cold, but yesterday was an exception. We had agreed to drive to the mountains so I just packed up some painkillers and hoped for the best. And to my pleasant surprise, it was fine. In fact, it seems like doing something like that just helped me feel better!

But anyway, the trip. I was rather naively thinking that we would get sunshine, blue skies and white mountains but we got clouds, heavy wind and snowmelt instead. Oh well. The weather is obviously always a game of luck, but I didn’t expect to see so many black blotches on the mountains. I’ve done many April mountain trips and now that I checked my old pictures, it proves that I wasn’t completely wrong in expecting those white mountains (just check out the pictures from my April trip last year!). But if the weather is a game of luck from day to day, then the seasons aren’t the same from year to year either.

If the clouds hadn’t been bad enough during the day, they just got worse in the evening. In fact, when we drove through Slagavallen which is at about 850m altitude, we found ourselves inside the cloud. So just when it was at its worst, it was at its best – the best pictures of the day, right at the end of it!

It was finally a sunny day, and what happens? I’m sick. Three of my colleagues were in different stages of having a cold this week and it was apparently impossible to dodge the bullet so now I’m just hoping that I don’t get any worse than I am right now. Last night was bad enough. The good news is that I don’t have fever (yet) so I was actually able to go outside just a little bit and work on a Christmas card idea I had. Other than that, I’m just too busy feeling sorry for myself to do anything constructive. I suck at being sick.

Just to give myself an excuse to whine about my aching sinuses, I’ll post a photo from last weekend. The snow cover gave a good opportunity to try high contrast (or high key, except it’s not really actually high key) with the spruce. Work in progress, I’ll try to nail this during the winter.

There’s nothing that can take my mind off things than photography. And I really need to take my mind off things. Too many things going wrong, I’m constantly stressed out and it’s starting to take its toll. But nothing to do about it, just wait and hope that everything will work out fine. And that’s all I’m gonna say about that.

I spent some time at Högforsen, it’s really only photogenic during low water so you can jump around on the cliffs. It had been raining at night so the shaded cliffs were a bit slippery, but I managed without breaking my skull or equipment. The sun was coming out which was making the cliffs safe, but ruining my photo ops – I still haven’t learned how to deal with the sunny highlights on running water. But I had to take the pictures to chase away those bad thoughts, if only for a moment.

Next week it’s vacation and the mountains, and I know from experience that it will do a world of good for me!

The universal truth among photographers is that the best light occurs during sunrise and sunset. And then there’s the equally true “it depends”, but instead of explaining at length on what it depends on, I will just say that light is also a perception. Simply put, it is what we perceive it to be at any given situation.

Today I had a Moment which changed my perception.

I left after breakfast because the forecast said that it will be a sunny morning and rainy afternoon. As I was driving my location, I was cursing at the high cloud – that nightmarish thin cloud cover which doesn’t entirely block the sun but it makes everything look very dull. Is it just me or has there been many such days this summer? But I didn’t have a plan B so I drove ahead anyway, if all else fails at least I could do some scouting because I had never been to this location where I was going now.

By the time I got there, the sun was completely blocked. I practised with long exposures and let the wind blur the grasses and smooth the water and after a while, I was rewarded by the faintest of sunshine and a sliver of blue sky in the horizon. It was only temporary but it gave me hope, so I settled down to have a cup of coffee.

And that’s when I had the Moment.

It was about sitting on a soft pillow of moss and lichen. It was the gentle wind and warm sun on my face. It was the backlit trees on the opposite shore and it was the family of swans and how the light was playing on the feathers whey they extended their wings. It was a Moment of absolute peace.

By the time the sun was out and the sky was blue, it was already a late morning. The universal truth among photographers tells me that the light is not good. But for me it was perfect – the Moment had changed my perception of it. The Moment was more important than the pictures and it liberated me to see beyond the light.

Maybe for anyone else these pictures are just snapshots during harsh light. But for me, they are the experience, the Moment, when I no longer had to search for inspiration like I have been doing all summer because the inspiration had come to me.

The light had never been more right than it was right then.

One photographer I have the deepest respect for is Guy Tal. He creates stunning landscape pictures but he is also a very insightful writer, just check out his blog. He recently wrote about photography competitions and I can only echo his thoughts. I’ve been very suspicious about any competitions for the very reason that he mentions, that in the end the success or failure of your pictures depends on the eye of the judge(s). A competition does not measure how good your pictures are – it measures the opinion of the person who is reviewing your picture.

Now it might sound a little bit like sour grapes when I say it, but it’s not. Yes I’ve participated in some competitions in the past, but only some random small ones (I’m realistic enough to know that I’m not good enough for any of the big ones!). And no I haven’t had any success, and sometimes I’ve been downright discouraged when I’ve seen the winning pictures. Technically inferior to mine, but what difference does it make when the judge is technically not a photographer? And anyway, since when has technique mattered? The photograph has to say something to the viewer, and my photographs don’t talk much. I like them quiet. The way I see it, I don’t need a prize to validate my photography. All I need is the satisfaction I get from my own work, created on my own terms. If someone else likes it, great! But as for competitions, I’m done with them. Zero ambitions.

A bit like writing this blog. I do it because I like to write, not because I entertain any illusion that I’m good at it. Why do you think I keep rambling on about nothing? It’s just the joy of seeing the noise on the keyboard turn into words on the screen. An excuse to publish some of those pictures I have lying around on the hard drive!

I finally had some holidays, if three busy days can be counted as such. But they were busy in the good way so I don’t mind! My sister came for a visit and there’s really nothing I want to show her around home so we headed to the mountains.

On Thursday we hiked up to the Kariknallen café above Bruksvallen for the obligatory waffle (yes, regular readers will have noticed my affection for the waffles) and then continued up to the Beritkläppen peak. The views were great just as you’d expect, but I was out of luck with the weather. A perfect weather for hiking is not a perfect weather for photography, but to be honest it didn’t really matter! It was just so nice to spend some time with my sister again.

Since my sister is interested in history and culture, I figured that she’d really enjoy a visit to Röros. I was right – the only disappointment was that the famous church of theirs was closed for renovation. But she got quickly over it as we were wandering around and admiring the old buildings. On the way back to Sweden I wanted to stop at Brekken and find a waterfall that I heard of a few years ago. It has taken me a long time to figure out exactly where the waterfall is and how to get there and now I finally got to see the place – and it was gorgeous. I’m telling you, it’s a real stunner! The light was a problem once again but imagine this same scene in autumn colours and soft light. I have a week’s vacation in September and I’ll be coming back here, no doubt about it!

Since this trip wasn’t about photography, I only had the 24-105mm zoom lens with me because I didn’t think I’d do any flowers this time. But when I came across these jacob’s ladder (Polemonium caeruleum) flowers in Mittådalen, it was a relief to see that the zoom lens was sufficient. It’s the first time I’ve seen the flower in the wild but that beautiful blue colour caught my eye immediately!

On Saturday it was already time to turn home. Our last hike was in the Rogen nature reserve. The lakes in Rogen are amazing, just check it out on a map and you’ll understand what I mean. I wanted to see if it was possible to get an aerial view from one of the surrounding peaks so we got up on the Handskinnsvålen fell off Käringsjön. While the landscape was amazing to see, the view over the lakes didn’t quite live up to my expectations but once again I didn’t mind. It was a great hike and who cares about the über-dull light when there’s wolf lichen to be admired? Rogen is one of the few remaining strongholds for this rare lichen.

All that remained then was the way home (we got to see a herd of hundreds of reindeer to my sister’s delight). But I’ll just say this… my sister ain’t no photographer. It turned out that her memory card was filled with pictures from the past year and the only way she could snap any new pictures was by going over the old ones and deleting something else. Which is not an ideal way to photograph any animate subjects such as the reindeer!

Not sure if I’ve mentioned that I have pictures at a stock agency. I’ve mentioned it on the front page of my homepage but here in the blog I’ve kept quiet about it… mostly because there’s nothing to say. I average about one sale per year, it’s a numbers game and I only have a few hundred pictures at the agency. I’d need a few thousand to get any income out of it! The funny thing about the stock pictures is that they accept pictures that I wouldn’t have thought were up to scratch, while they reject pictures which are my favourites. So what makes a good stock picture? I still don’t know, so I send them a wild assortment and let them figure out what works and what doesn’t.

So these few pictures that have been sold through the agency, I never find out how they have been used. The information I get is only which picture it was, who bought it, and for what purpose. For example, the latest picture sold through the agency was bought by Nordstedts and it was used for an advertisement. It could be published anywhere, I would never find out. It’s a winter landscape picture from the mountains, lonely ski tracks heading towards the tundra. Nothing special in my eyes so I had completely forgotten that I had ever taken such a picture.

Yesterday at the library I noticed that they had a freebie magazine out for grabs. “Fjällsäker” (Safety in the mountains) is an annual publication intended for tourists to educate them on how to dress warmly, watch out for the changes in the weather, avoid avalanche prone areas etc. Since I read everything about the mountains I can get my hands on, of course I grabbed a copy of this. Page 17 is dedicated for maps, and in the lower right corner there’s an ad for Fjällkartan (mountain map). Click here for the PDF, and go to page 17. I thought the picture looked very familiar. Hmm.. a winter landscape from the mountains with ski tracks… it’s an ad from Norstedts… could it… yes it is! That’s my picture!!

Talk about a coincidence! I have most of the mountain maps on my shelf (two copies of some of them), so having one of my pictures used for advertising Fjällkartan makes me very proud!

And what’s more of a coincidence is that this happens hot on the heels of the book. At the rate of which I normally have my work published, I’ve already exceeded my annual average and it’s only January. I don’t need a crystal ball to predict that I can now look forward to 11 very lean months… So don’t worry, the gloating will stop here!

It’s been quiet about my cabin project but now it’s coming along again. The permits got delayed, then the cabin frame got delayed, then the big freeze set in and they couldn’t do the groundwork. No big issue for me, I’m not in a hurry.

But now the groundwork is almost done. I went there on Saturday to take a look (because some things I don’t believe until I see them!) and was delighted and scared at the same time. Delighted to see that instead of creating a small parking place close the road, they had created a driveway all the way to the cabin (which probably was out of necessity to be able to access the cabin site by big machinery in the first place). Scared because the cabin suddenly became very much a reality. Not sure if that makes sense… but this whole project is so much bigger than I ever imagined. It is costing me more money than I ever imagined. To be honest, it’s sometimes frightening the living daylights out of me. Had I known what this would be like… never in a million years would I have gotten myself into it.

But, the process is irreversible now. For good or for evil, that cabin is going to be there and I have to pay for it.

And then I did that little snowshoe walk in the winter mountain scenery. And I loved it. I love the mountains. I don’t think I’ve ever felt such a sense of belonging somewhere since I moved from Finland. I belong to the mountains.

And then the cabin didn’t feel like such a burden anymore. Cost it what it may, but it will be my homebase in a place where I want to be more than anywhere else in the world.

Does that make any sense?

Last spring I was asked if I could take some pictures for a local book project. I was a bit hesitant because the motif wasn’t my normal stuff and experience has taught me that I don’t do well “on commission” – I’m only at ease when my inspiration to photograph comes from inside me. But, I’m also not very good at saying no so there I was at the Fågelsjö Gammelgård, shooting interiors and trying not to break any of the fragile old handicraft pieces from the 19th century while setting them up for close-ups.

The book is based on the diary entries of a local farmer. He lived on the estate that is now the Fågelsjö Gammelgård old farm museum, so his life is preserved not only in the words he wrote but also in the buildings, interior decorations and assorted household items. He was a skilful craftsman and it’s fascinating to see all the things he had manufactured himself, it seems like he was even a bit of an inventor because some of the artefacts were very creative.

The book was supposed to come out already last summer, I was asked well ahead in time but then the time ran out and suddenly they were in a hurry and I had to jump in with a short notice. And then as it happens so often, life intervened and the project got delayed anyway, but now the book is finally out and it looks great! Much better than I expected, and I mean the book as a whole. But the strange thing is… all of my pictures in the book look better than I expected as well. I’ve often heard photographers say that pictures look better in print than on screen, and I think that this book proves it. For all the hesitation at first, I’m really happy I did the job because now I have my work published in a book I can be proud of!

The book is called Min hand är icke begåfvad att föra en skikliger penna – Fågelsjöbonden Jonas Olssons dagbok 1851-1892 and it’s edited by Eva Heggestad (ISBN 978-91-633-6003-9, published by Fågelsjö Hembygdsförening). It will be available in the Ljusdal bookstore and I’m sure that it will be prominently displayed at the Fågelsjö Gammelgård museum in the summer.